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Category Archives: Performances

The Pillowman is coming!

The PillowmanIntense, frightening, brutal, funny, sickening, and exciting, Martin McDonagh’s play The Pillowman opens March 18th at The Birdhouse Theatre in the West Bottoms.  A writer in a totalitarian state is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a number of child-murders that are happening in his town.  Produced by fledging company She&Her Productions and directed by Trevor Belt, this unflinching examination of art, violence, and censorship stars Coleman Crenshaw, Matt Leonard, Jeremy Frazier, and Rick Williamson.

At a time when much of the Middle East is poised on the cusp of revolution many states are at the edge of either unprecedented freedom or crushing repression.  While we all hope for the former, this play is set firmly in the later.  An English-speaking government, under the guise of moral authority and in order to protect its citizenry, has created a nation in which police have the ultimate power to imprison, torture, and kill with impunity.  In this authoritarian state a writer is dragged into an interrogation room for writing brutally violent short stories, many of which feature graphic descriptions of child mutilations.  He and his simple-minded brother are pulled into a maelstrom of physical and psychological torment beacuse someone has begun to act out his stories, brutally murdering children one by one.

McDonagh at his best, this play is a tour de force of twists and turns, hope and hopelessness, and failure and triumph.  It is great storytelling.  Don’t miss it.

The Pillowman has a very limited run in one of the more intimate theatres in Kansas City, The Birdhouse Theatre in the West Bottoms, so seating is very limited.  Reserve your tickets now at http://www.eventsbot.com/events/eb622581203.  Or by calling 816-405-9200 or emailing the box office.

March 18, 19, 21, 25, 26, and 28. All shows at 8pm.

She & Her Productions is dedicated to the creation of quality and diverse performance art.  Our goal is to entertain and educate in a unique and accepting environment which embraces and encourages diversity in our community, thus enriching the culture.

UMKC University News Review (Jacquelyn Hoermann)

Coterie unlocks the bridge to ‘Terabithia’

BY JACQUELYN HOERMANN (JHOERMANN@UNEWS.COM), ON FEBRUARY 14TH, 2011
Leslie (Haley Waiff) in Terabithia.Leslie (Haley Waiff) in Terabithia. 

If you want to see some of Kansas City’s most impressive youth thespians, check out the Coterie Theatre’s “Bridge to Terabithia,” showing through Feb. 27.

“Bridge to Terabithia,” a 1977 Newberry award-winning novel by Katherine Paterson, was first adapted to the big screen in 1985 and made a second comeback as a Disney movie in 2007.

“Bridge to Terabithia” tells the story of Jesse, an alienated boy in rural Virginia. A big-city girl, Leslie, gives him a glimpse into a world of imagination, literature and art. Terabithia is an imagined kingdom safe for those who aren’t normally accepted or understood by society.

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Bridge to Terabithia Review by Grace Suh (via The Pitch)

The fifth-grade protagonists of Bridge to Terabithia are also “others.” Jesse is poor and artistic, while Leslie is new in school and the child of bohemian intellectuals who don’t watch TV — an aberration that boggles the minds of her classmates.

The friendship between these two outsiders is at the heart of Katherine Paterson‘s Newbery Award-winning novel and of the play she adapted with Stephanie Tolan. Jesse and Leslie create a secret hideout called Terabithia, “a place just for us,” as Leslie says, where they imagine themselves regal and valorous.

Taking the always-risky flyer on a nearly all-child cast, director Jeff Church wins big with the wonderful leads, the personable 14-year-old Marshall Hopkins as the sensitive Jesse and 12-year-old Haley Wolff(an absolute natural) as the spirited Leslie. The rapport and warmth between them and their joy in Terabithia make up the linchpin of this very good production.

Megan Catherine Gross transforms the Coterie into magical spaces. She also produced the paintings that do clever double duty as scenic background and Jesse’s artwork. Ron Megee and Lee Berhorst‘s Terabithian palace is an inspired piece of design. Georgianna Buchanan chooses to keep the costumes true to the book’s 1970s time frame, a savvy strategy that evokes waves of parental nostalgia with every flower-sprigged calico maxi dress and ethnic embroidered poncho.

The novel’s arc, in particular its abrupt tragedy, plays out much less effectively in abbreviated play form. In fact, the ending seemed to fly over the heads of the shorter audience members. But the idea of friendship as a refuge, an act of courage, and the magic that turns outsiders into insiders — that shines bright and clear.

http://www.pitch.com/2011-01-27/culture/the-kc-rep-s-another-american-the-coterie-s-bridge-to-terabithia/